The Perpetual Curate

side-passage to a little out-of-the-way room, which he knew was where Louisa was wont to retire when she had her headaches, as was well known to all the house of Wentworth. The Curate went in with some impatience and some alarm to this retired apartment. His eyes, dazzled by the sunshine, could not penetrate at first the shadowy greenness of the room, which, what with the trees without and the Venetian blind within, was lost in a kind of twilight, grateful enough after a while, but bewildering at the first moment. Out of this darkness somebody rose as he entered, and walked into his arms with trembling eagerness. “Oh Frank, I am so thankful you are come! now perhaps something may be done; for you always understood,” said his little sister-in-law, reaching up to kiss him. She was a tiny little woman, with soft eyes and a tender little blooming face, which he had never before seen obscured by any cloud, or indeed moved by any particular sentiment. Now the firmament was all overcast, and Louisa, it was evident, had been sitting in the shade of her drawn blinds, having a quiet cry, and going into all her grievances. To see such a serene creature all clouded over and full of tears, gave the Curate a distinct shock of alarm and anxiety. He led her back to her sofa, seeing clearer and clearer, as he watched her face, the plaintive lines of complaint, the heavy burden of trouble which she was about to cast on his shoulders. He grew more and more afraid as he looked at her. “Is Gerald ill?” he said, with a thrill of terror; but even this could scarcely account for the woeful look of all the accessories to the picture.

“Oh, Frank, I am so glad you are come!” said Louisa through her tears. “I felt sure you would come when you got my letter. Your father thinks I make a fuss about nothing, and Cuthbert and Guy do nothing but laugh at me, as if they could possibly know; but you always understand me, Frank. I knew it was just as good as sending for a brother of my own; indeed better,” said Mrs. Wentworth, wiping her eyes; “for though Gerald is using me so badly, I would not expose him out of his own family, or have people making remarks⁠—oh, not for the world!”

“Expose him!” said the Curate, with unutterable astonishment. “You don’t mean to say you have any complaint to make about Gerald?” The idea was so preposterous that Frank Wentworth laughed; but it was not a laugh pleasant to hear.

“Oh, Frank, if you but knew all,” said Louisa; “what I have had to put up with for months⁠—all my best feelings outraged, and so many things to endure that were dreadful to think of. And I that was always brought up so differently; but now,” cried the poor little woman, bursting into renewed tears, “it’s come to such a pass that it can’t be concealed any longer. I think it will break my heart; people will be sure to say I have been to blame; and how I am ever to hold up my head in society, and what is to be my name, and whether I am to be considered a widow⁠—”

“A widow!” cried the Perpetual Curate, in utter consternation.

“Or worse,” sobbed Gerald’s poor little wife: “it feels like being divorced⁠—as if one had done something wrong; and I am sure I never did anything to deserve it; but when your husband is a Romish priest,” cried the afflicted woman, pressing her handkerchief to her eyes, “I would just ask anybody what are you? You can’t be his wife, because he is not allowed to have any wife; and you can’t go back to your maiden name, because of the children; and how can you have any place in society? Oh, Frank, I think I shall go distracted,” said poor Louisa; “it will feel as if one had done something wicked, and been put out of the pale. How can I be called Mrs. Wentworth any more when my husband has left me? and even if he is a priest, and can’t have any wife, still he will be alive, and I shall not have the satisfaction of being a widow even. I am sure I don’t know what I say,” she concluded, with a fresh outburst; “for to be a widow would be a poor satisfaction, and I don’t know how I could ever, ever live without Gerald; but to feel as if you were an improper person, and all the children’s prospects in life!⁠—Oh, Frank!” cried the weeping Louisa, burying her face in her handkerchief, “I think I shall go distracted, and my heart will break.”

To all this strange and unexpected revelation the startled Curate listened like a man in a dream. Possibly his sister-in-law’s representation of this danger, as seen entirely from her own point of view, had a more alarming effect upon him that any other statement of the case. He could have gone into Gerald’s difficulties with so much sympathy and fellow-feeling that the shock would have been trifling in comparison; and between Rome and the highest level of Anglicanism there was no such difference as to frighten the accustomed mind of the Curate of St. Roque’s. But, seen from Louisa’s side, matters appeared very different: here the foundations of the earth were shaking, and life itself going to pieces; even the absurdity of her distress made the whole business more real; and the poor little woman, whose trouble was that she herself would neither be a wife nor a widow, had enough of truth on her side to unfold a miserable picture to the eyes of the anxious spectator. He did not know what answer to make her; and perhaps it was a greater consolation to poor Louisa to be permitted to run on⁠—

“And you know it never needed to have come to this if Gerald